Cite as: 521 U. S. 74 (1997)
Breyer, J., dissenting
Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting.
Georgia elects 11 Members of the United States House of Representatives. Georgia's African-American voting age population is just over 1.7 million, or about 27 percent of a total voting age population of about 6.5 million. See Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 906 (1995). In 1992 Georgia's Legislature redrew congressional district boundaries so as to create an African-American voting age majority in 3 of 11 districts. This Court held that three-district plan unconstitutional. Id., at 928. On remand, the District Court, inter alia, drew up a new redistricting plan with one majority-minority district. Johnson v. Miller, 922 F. Supp. 1556, 1560-1561 (SD Ga. 1995). The basic legal issue before us now is whether the District Court should have retained (not one but) two majority-minority districts.
The majority holds that the District Court could lawfully create a new districting plan that retained only one such district. But in my view that decision departs dramatically from the Georgia Legislature's preference for two such districts—a preference embodied in the legislature's earlier congressional district plans. A two-district plan is not unconstitutional. And the District Court here, like the District Court in Upham v. Seamon, 456 U. S. 37, 43 (1982) (per curiam), "was not free . . . to disregard the political program of the . . . Legislature." For that reason, and others, I dissent.
I
The majority fully understands the relevance, and the importance, here of this Court's Upham decision. In Upham the Court said:
" 'Just as a federal district court . . . should follow the policies and preferences of the State, as expressed . . . in the reapportionment plans proposed by the state legislature, whenever adherence to state policy does not detract from the requirements of the Federal Constitution,
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